by Craig Dirkes
I knew Dalton didn’t have much in terms of cash flow. He straight up told me so during a phone conversation we’d had a few weeks before I came to Kusko. He still hadn’t gotten the Patriot resurrected after purchasing it six years ago. He said he needed a reporter willing to work for cheap so he could focus on selling ads.
Dalton didn’t have to offer the job twice. After flunking out of college, I was desperate for any job related to journalism. That was my major, or would’ve been if I’d survived the first semester. When it was clear I was bombing out, my adviser said I would be eligible to reenroll in college after a year, on the condition that I spend the time doing something that proved I was ready to be a college student again. Working as a reporter more than qualified.
As idiotic as I felt for flubbing my first try at college, I kept telling myself that it wasn’t the end of the world. Considering I’d turned eighteen over the summer, I’d still be the age of a proper college freshman after my year in Kusko. Going back after a year wouldn’t be like in high school, where the flunkies stood out among kids a year or two younger.
In my dad’s eyes, however, my botching college would be the end of the world. I hadn’t told him, and didn’t know how or when I could. For all he knew, I was still in Anchorage continuing an exemplary college career as the first Ashford to pursue higher education.
I didn’t know how long I could keep Kusko a secret from my dad. At least a few months, I guessed. Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about him coming to Anchorage for a visit anytime soon; he couldn’t afford to fly there. To cover my bases online, I had deleted my Facebook account. That was the only place where my dad kept tabs on me.
Deception aside, I was elated to land the reporter job in Kusko. Back in my hometown of Zimmerman, Minnesota, a town not much bigger than Kusko, and in some ways not much cleaner, I started writing sports stories for the local newspaper when I was fifteen. Scoring the Delta Patriot gig wasn’t a crazy leap.
* * *
Dalton and I hurried out of the office, through the screaming wind, and into his truck. By now the clouds had blocked the late-day sun, and snow had begun to fall. The wall of clouds now lurched along directly overhead. The wind was so strong, I had to use both hands to shut the door.
“We need to feed the dogs and get indoors,” Dalton said, cramming a wad of leaf tobacco into his mouth. “My place is a half mile away.”
We sped past house after dumpy little house. Some of them could’ve fit inside my dad’s garage, and he’s hardly rich. All of them were built a few feet off the ground.
“What’s up with the little stilts under the houses?” I asked.
“Permafrost,” Dalton answered, spitting into a pop can. “If you built a house right on the tundra, the heat from inside would melt the permafrost underneath, and the place would sink.”
We pulled into his driveway. His house was a small blue one-story, like an old lake cabin but without the charm — or the lake.
The neighbor’s trash can blew over, fifteen yards to our left. Used tissue and a small plastic grocery bag whipped past the hood of the truck. I was ready to seek shelter in a basement, but in Kusko, there were no basements.
The moment we exited the truck, Dalton’s dogs erupted into a blaring chorus of howls, barks, and whines. Their noise prompted every mutt from every other dog yard within earshot to join in. Suddenly, all the dogs within a couple blocks were going crazy. I looked around, listened, and dropped my mouth in amazement. I was surprised I could even hear the other dogs over the shrieking wind.
Dalton smiled over his shoulder and waved for me to follow.
“When one pack starts, all the other ones around have to have their say too,” he said, dropping his head to shield his face from snow blowing sideways. “Just wait until my dogs start howling at three a.m. when it’s quiet and sound travels better. Dog packs from clear across town will be in on it.”
I followed him toward a rundown shed that stood out back in a dog yard that spanned two sides of his home. Each of the fifteen dogs was chained to a metal stake near its wooden doghouse. Each doghouse was filled with straw and surrounded by wooden pallets. Three-foot-high snowdrifts stuck to the west side of every house.
We walked through ankle-high snow, on a path that needed shoveling. The dogs went even crazier when Dalton passed by, bounding into the air and shaking snow off their backs. The clanking of their chains sounded like sleigh bells.
“Why all the pallets?” I shouted over the howling wind.
“So the dogs don’t stomp in their own shit all day,” Dalton hollered back, veering toward the shed.
Most of the dogs were sandy brown and slightly smaller than an average-sized Labrador. Three white ones stood out from the crowd. The brown dogs looked so similar, I couldn’t see how Dalton could tell them apart.
One of the three white dogs had a few gray patches on her back. I walked over to her through the snow. She seemed happier than the rest. It almost looked like she was smiling at me.
“That’s Joanie,” Dalton said, one hand on the shed doorknob. “Smartest lead dog I’ve ever owned.”
He kicked snow away from the base of the door and opened it. After he went inside, a savage gust of wind slammed the door shut.
I stood just outside the door with my hands over my ears while he retrieved the food. Behind the shed — snowy tundra, tundra, and more tundra. Snowdrifts rolled across the flat landscape like waves on a lake. I doubted any homes rested beyond the hundred-some yards of tundra I could see. Dalton’s house must have been planted on the very edge of town.
I looked back toward Dalton’s house. He had two next-door neighbors. The house closest to the side dog yard was a dilapidated log cabin. The house on the other side was a nicer home with green paint. Both homes stood twenty yards from Dalton’s.
Dalton emerged from the shed with two five-gallon buckets of dog food. “You feed the dogs on the side of the house, and I’ll take the ones back here,” he ordered, handing me one of the buckets and a metal scoop. “Once the dogs are full, they’ll hunker down in their houses and stay warm. We’re talking fifty below windchill today. No dog is built for that kind of cold. But they’ll be safe now.”
* * *
With the work done, Dalton and I unbundled in the entryway. His place looked decent enough for what it was — two bedrooms with a separate kitchen, living room, and dining area. The entire place couldn’t have been much bigger than the unfinished basement inside my house back in Minnesota, and our house was no mansion.
I sat down on the living room couch while Dalton got a pot of coffee brewing. I looked outside a bay window facing the tundra. Complete whiteout now. Nothing was visible beyond the doghouse closest to the window.
I didn’t know what to make of Kusko. The inside of my head was just as blank as the view outside. I’d been on sensory overload from the moment I walked off the plane, and I hadn’t had time to think. This place’ll be cool, I guessed. Six thousand people live here. They can’t all be wrong.
Dalton opened the fridge and pulled out a family-sized Tupperware container filled with some sort of brown mush.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Depends,” I said. “What is that?”
“Moose stew. Ever tried it?”
“No. But something tells me that if I’m going to live here, I’d better like that stuff if I don’t want to go hungry.”
“You catch on fast,” Dalton said, chuckling.
He dumped half the container of stew into a pot. While warming it on the stove, he told me how he’d shot a seventy-inch bull moose about a hundred and fifty miles southeast of Kusko, near a town called Dillingham. He flew there every fall to bag a moose. The meat would last him almost an entire year.
He poured a bowl for each of us. I sat down across from him at the kitchen table.
“So, Eddie,” Dalton said, taking his f
irst bite. “What do you think of bush life so far?”
“Not sure yet,” I said, testing the stew with the tip of my tongue. “It’s different.”
“Bet your ass it’s different. Anchorage people are pansy-ass cidiots. Their idea of a genuine Alaskan experience is driving two hours to go combat fishing on the Russian River alongside hundreds of tourists, or camping by the Kenai River in their fancy fifth-wheel trailers. Kusko is the real Alaska, my friend. This’ll make a man out of you.”
I finished my first bite of stew, then another. A little gamey, but yummy. It tasted almost as good as the beef stew my mom used to make.
“Speaking of genuine Alaskan experiences,” I said, “will I get to try mushing?”
“Absolutely,” Dalton assured me. “I’ll teach you in no time. Soon you’ll be running those dogs all by yourself.”
CHAPTER 2
CHEECHAKO
Two hours until deadline. I’d been at the office typing my nards off since seven a.m., writing my third story in four days. That was more stories than I’d ever written in an entire month when I was doing sports back home or pecking away at the University of Anchorage’s student newspaper, the Puffin Press, in the fall.
I’d published only two stories in the Puffin Press. That’s it. Two. I’d been assigned four others, but I couldn’t manage to turn them in on time. I had more important demands on my time. I could shotgun a beer in less than five seconds, but I couldn’t finish a news story in a week.
Dalton sat at his desk, drawing thumbnail sketches of where the advertisements were to be placed on each page of this week’s edition of the Patriot.
My story was about the U.S. Coast Guard rescuing a father and son who got stranded while hunting caribou twenty miles northeast of Tununak, a village located one hundred fifty miles west of Kusko. I had just gotten off the phone with a Coast Guard spokesman who said the father had activated a personal locator beacon after his snow machine conked out.
When the spokesman said “snow machine,” I played along like I knew what he meant. I had no idea. Is that some kind of ATV I’ve never seen?
I figured I’d just write it in. The locals would understand.
“How’s the story coming, Eddie?” Dalton asked, sipping coffee.
“Almost done,” I said. “Just one thing — what’s a snow machine?”
“It’s what you tenderfoots from the lower forty-eight call a snowmobile,” he said, and laughed.
K, dick.
“Thanks,” I said. “Any other Alaska terms I ought to know?”
“Cheechako,” Dalton replied, still chuckling to himself.
“What’s that mean?”
“Look it up.”
I didn’t have time for that. I needed every minute I could get for the Tununak story. I wanted it to be perfect.
The two other stories I’d already written were about: 1) A non-fatal plane crash near the runway in the village of Red Devil, and 2) A new school lunch program in Kusko, through which all kids in grades K through twelve were being offered locally caught salmon twice a week.
Dalton had put me straight to work the day after I arrived in Kusko, saying we had to crank out an entire edition in just four days — technically, three and a half days, since deadline was every Tuesday at noon.
Beyond pointing me toward the folding table and ancient computer, Dalton hadn’t bothered with much training, but he had paused long enough to give me the basics: The Patriot circulated in every single village of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta — one of the largest deltas on Earth, with twenty-five thousand people living in fifty-six villages scattered across a region the size of Oregon. The printing company shipped five thousand copies to Kusko every week. When the newspapers arrived Wednesday morning, two-thirds of them were divvied up and sent aboard planes to all fifty-six villages. The rest stayed in Kusko, where Dalton set them on a rack at Kusko Dry Goods and inside nine newspaper boxes around town.
My job was to fill the space between the ads, and I was running out of time on the snow machine story.
Dalton’s phone rang, and he picked it up before the second ring. “Delta Patriot,” he said. “Hi, Misty.”
I paused at the keyboard.
“Seriously?” Dalton said. “Hold on.”
He dropped the phone to his shoulder. “Eddie, what time is it?”
I checked my watch. “Quarter after ten.”
He got back on the phone. “My new guy will be there in five minutes.”
Dalton dug into his pocket and tossed his keys to me from across the room. “That was Misty Livermont, the court clerk. She has a decent story for you at the courthouse. Drive up there, get the police report, and haul ass back here.”
I checked my watch again.
“Get going,” Dalton said. “Misty’s a Native lady, sits right up front. Looks mean but isn’t.”
“That’s helpful,” I said. At first I’d been surprised by the bluntness of Alaskans when it came to describing people as Natives or Eskimos — or whites, for that matter. Back home, the mention of race or color or anything along those lines brought out the cautious side in everybody — everybody, that is, except the elderly and the obnoxious. But in a place like Kusko, where at least half the population was all or part Native, it seemed that word was just another adjective, like short or tall, fat or thin, pretty or plain.
I added, “But I’m not even done with the Tununak story yet.”
“I’ll finish it while you’re gone.” Any trace of patience had gone out of Dalton’s voice. “Go. Now. Remember, time is money.”
I grabbed my coat and bolted out the door.
I fired up Dalton’s truck and flipped on the headlights. I still wasn’t completely used to it being dark after ten a.m. I felt like I should be feeling hungry for breakfast, not lunch.
I stepped on the gas, because when Dalton said time was money, he meant it. On my first day, he had explained that for every hour we were late sending stories and photos to the printing company in Anchorage, he was out two hundred dollars. The copy editors, layout artists, and printing press operators who worked at the printer got paid not only for the time they spent producing the Patriot, but also the time they wasted waiting for us to send them content.
Two minutes later, I pulled up to what apparently passed for a courthouse in a place like Kusko. The rundown building was the size of a small-town bank. Sky blue paint flaked off the wood siding.
I left the truck running and dashed inside, where behind the front counter stood a Native woman who wore a hard-nosed expression and a red sweater with wildflowers knitted across the front. She held up a piece of paper.
“You must be Misty,” I said. “I’m Eddie from the Patriot.”
“Here,” she replied, handing me the paper. “We just logged this in to the blotter. I figured Dalton would want to fit it in this week.”
Dalton had already typed up a half-page of police-blotter entries for the back page of this week’s paper. Each entry included one sentence about a crime somebody was either charged with or convicted of, and the blotter was intended to include every crime committed in the YK Delta. Dalton had the power to transform any of the entries into a full-blown story — including the one I held in my hand.
“Thanks,” I said with my head down, scanning the document. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I glanced back at Misty and added, “Crazy story.”
“Get used to it,” Misty said with a smirk. “Out here, drunk people do stupid shit all over the place.”
I laughed — not just because her comment was funny, but because it sounded even funnier coming out of the mouth of a woman who looked like she belonged in a church basement knitting more sweaters like the one she had on.
* * *
Twelve minutes until deadline. I typed so fast I was practically sweating.
“How you coming, Ed
die?” Dalton asked, typing just as feverishly. “Don’t overthink it. The story doesn’t need to be flashy.”
“Almost there,” I said.
“You got a headline in mind?”
“Pilot Station man crashes and burns.”
“Nice,” Dalton said.
He had offered to write the last-minute story, but I insisted that I could handle it. I wanted to prove I could deliver under pressure, although I wasn’t entirely sure I could.
My story opened like this:
PILOT STATION, Alaska — State Troopers arrested a 22-year-old male resident of this Yukon River village after he got drunk and rammed his four-wheel ATV into the only gas pump in town. The pump burst into flames, and the fire spread to a nearby house.
I made a quick call to get a couple quotes from the owner of the gas station and cranked out the story faster than I’d ever done before. I concluded with a line about how the town’s three hundred fifty residents would be without a fuel source for several days, shouted “Don
coloe!”, and pressed the return key extra hard to flaunt my accomplishment.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Ten to twelve,” Dalton said. “Email me the story, and that’ll be a wrap.”
I sat back and watched as he scanned the story. I took a sip of coffee, but spat it back into the mug. I’d been so busy, I hadn’t touched it in almost an hour, hadn’t known it went cold.
“Nice job,” Dalton said without looking at me. “I think you’ll do just fine here.”
“Thanks,” I replied, prouder of myself than I let on. “So, what now? Am I done for the day?”
After four days of nonstop work, I was exhausted and wanted to chill, but Dalton said he wanted to show me how to upload all the stories and photos to the Patriot’s website, which he explained had to be done by three p.m. every Tuesday.
“So we’ll still be here awhile,” he said. “And after we finish here, you get to go home and clean up dog shit in the yard while I cook us dinner. Then you’ll be done.”